1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cutting apparatus and an image forming apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to a cutting apparatus capable of preventing a malfunction of the cutting apparatus occurring due to adhesion or intrusion of cutting scraps to the sheet bundle or into the cutting apparatus, which may adhere to a blade surface of a cutting blade due to electrical charge when a sheet or a sheet bundle including a plurality of sheets is subjected to cutting processing by the cutting apparatus, by surely scraping the cutting scraps off the blade surface of the cutting blade.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional cutting apparatus that conveys a book of a sheet bundle including a plurality of sheets to a predetermined cutting position to cut the book, if the cutting margin is small when the edge of the book is aligned, cutting scraps may adhere to a blade surface of a cutting blade (particularly to a cutting blade leading edge) due to static electricity.
If cutting scraps have adhered to a cutting blade as described above, the adhering cutting scraps may not be collected into a scrap collection portion. In this case, the cutting scraps may come off from the cutting blade at some timing and may drop into a conveyance path of the book. Furthermore, the dropped cutting scraps may intrude into the cutting apparatus. In this case, the cutting scraps that have entered the cutting apparatus may become a cause of malfunction of the cutting apparatus.
In addition, if cutting scraps may drop into a book conveyance path, the dropped cutting scraps may adhere to the book to be conveyed and reaches a book stack unit. In this case, the external appearance of a stacked book may degrade. In addition, in this case, it becomes necessary for an operator of the cutting apparatus to execute an unnecessary operation for removing the cutting scraps adhering to the book by hand.
In order to address the above-described problem, a method discussed in U.S. Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007/0267801 removes cutting scraps from a cutting blade by pressing a rotational paddle onto the cutting blade. However, in removing cutting scraps by using a paddle as executed in the above-described conventional method, if the adhesive force generated between the cutting blade and the cutting scraps is greater than the scraping force, which is generated by the frictional force generated between the paddle and the cutting scraps, then the cutting scraps may not be effectively removed from the cutting blade by merely pressing and rotating the paddle against and on the cutting blade.